Movie Reviews: Game Night

Game Night
directed by John Daley and Jonathan Goldstein

This black comedy is in some ways an extended riff on some classic Three Stooges comedy routines (mostly lacking the slapstick) in which the protagonists are either mistaken for someone else or enter an arena or game under mistaken pretenses. The Three Stooges weren't the first or last to use this trope. They may not even have been the best to use such routines. They just happen to have been the first people I saw use the routine. So they were the first to come to mind. You may recall several other movies or books which use this theme. It's not as easy to pull off as it looks. 

For this to work over the entire running time of a feature length film, you need to believe that the protagonists aren't utter morons. That's boring. Rather the heroes and heroines are just fish out of water. Some of them will be quicker on the uptake than others of course. Much like the similar walk on the wild side comedy, The House, Game Night invites the viewer, who presumably doesn't have lots of experience with shady activities, to imagine himself or herself thrust into some dodgy situations with some had hombres. Unlike The House, Game Night was consistently funny without much grossout humor.

Stephen Colbert is a Tolkien Nerd

I don't watch a lot of television so I didn't know that Stephen Colbert was a fan of Chance the rapper, Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Good man. You really should read The Silmarillion if you have the time. There's a lot of good stories contained within, including a fictionalized reworking of how Tolkien met and fell in love with his wife.

                      

Serena Williams and US Open

Serena Williams lost the US Open Championship Finals to Naomi Osaka. During this tennis match, Williams threw a temper tantrum and didn't reign it in until the umpire, Carlos Ramos, docked her a game. Osaka was already ahead of Williams. Osaka was probably going to win the tennis match anyway. It wasn't the first time that Osaka had beaten Williams. And it probably won't be the last. Although Williams can claim to be the best female tennis player ever, her career is winding down. Williams is in her late thirties. Osaka is about to turn twenty-one. There aren't any physically demanding sports where the older person routinely beats the younger one. It's just the way things are. Eventually the body can't do what the mind demands. In time, even the mind can lose some competitive hunger. Winter is coming for us all. Father Time is undefeated.

I don't avidly follow women's tennis but I have noticed that Williams' crackups usually occur when she is losing. Athletes such as Michael Jordan, John McEnroe, George Brett, Muhammad Ali, and other champions were often abrasive or even abusive to umpires, judges, referees, sparring partners, or teammates. There is a train of thought that says "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser." The intensity which has allowed Williams to dominate her sport for the better part of two decades is the same intensity that causes her to hurl insults at or make threats against umpires and line judges. I doubt that she can turn that off.

So I was nonplussed by Williams' tirade. The only thing which annoyed me is that rather than make the normal semi-apology "I had a bad day/I lost it/I don't want to talk about it/Just one of those things" which most athletes make once they cool down, Williams doesn't appear to think she did anything wrong. Williams made the claim that the umpire was picking on her because she was a woman. Well that's not the case. Here's what happened. 

Movie Reviews: Creed

Creed
directed by Ryan Coogler

I suppose you could call this Rocky 7 or Rocky The Next Generation. It's a continuation of the Rocky story as well as a spin off of that series and beginning of a new story. I didn't see this for the longest time for whatever reason but recently decided to check out on the advice of my brother. Creed is a really good movie. Surprisingly good, actually. Before I mention anything else most of the Rocky movies were if anything incredibly unrealistic in their fight scenes.

People took WAY too many shots to the head-not just jabs either but tons of overhands and crosses. While that might have been the expectation were a trained boxer to fight someone untrained, if you've ever watched real boxing matches between equally competent people who know what they're doing, the matches usually don't look like that. Or rather they don't look like that until someone gets tired and either gets beat or starts taking too many chances. The fighters as imagined in the prior Rocky movies would have had to be superhuman to get hit in the face that many times. The results were entertaining but often cartoonish. The fight cinematography in Creed is as close to the real thing as I've ever seen in a boxing movie.

Everyone moves like real boxers, perhaps in part because many of the actors were indeed professional boxers. As a result it was easier for me to lose myself in the story.  Former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) one time Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) rival and later good friend died in the boxing ring fighting Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. 

Maine Moose Poop Artwork

This woman sounds exactly like a character out of a Stephen King novel. Her distinctive accent notwithstanding, I don't think I would want to purchase a damn thing that she's selling. Not one thing. But YMMV. I guess this is good old Yankee ingenuity and entrepreneurship in action. Stay classy Maine.

SOMERVILLE, Maine (WABI) - One person's trash is another's treasure.

There's a woman in Maine who sells arts and crafts that she makes in her own home that takes THAT saying to a whole new level. Mary Winchenbach became something of a viral sensation in the past few days following her stint at the Common Ground Fair.

There's a lot going on at her Somerville home. There are two adults, three kids, more than 60 animals, some fish, and a whole bunch of moose turds.
Winchenbach runs Tirdy Works, making artwork from the stuff moose leave behind. 

Book Reviews: The Gospel of Loki

The Gospel of Loki
by Joanne M. Harris

I really enjoy Norse mythology. It has a lot of cynicism, doom, dread, bad a$$ boasts, and ultimately hope. It's quite similar to blues in many ways. So I was all set to enjoy this book. And I did. Loki is in the Norse eschatological sense a leading force of evil. But he didn't start out that way. In most of the stories that have been passed down Loki is more a trickster. He's the Norse incarnation of the archetype demonstrated in other myths/religions/stories by such Gods or heroes as Eshu, Anansi, Odysseus, Robin Goodfellow, Brer Rabbit, Bugs Bunny and so on. The trickster is not necessarily evil but he is usually untrustworthy, much as the name suggests. Loki lived up to that name in the various Norse stories. 

Loki was useful to the Gods (Aesir and Vanir). He often got them out of serious trouble. Of course he usually was the one who got them into the trouble in the first place. Loquacious, elegant, attractive, intelligent, gender-fluid, and often vindictive, Loki is the quintessential bad boy joker. As mentioned, in most of the stories that remain, Loki wasn't always a bad sort. It's just that his sense of humor wasn't always shared by everyone. Over time his jokes, tricks and pranks become progressively more malicious until he commits an act which can't be forgiven. This leads to his expulsion from Asgard and the long foretold Ragnarok, or final battle between good and evil, which will destroy all of existence. This is of course all foretold which of course brings the age old debate between free will and determinism into the forefront.

Harris reworks the grim serious stilted language of the Norse eddas into something much easier to read and fun in a different sort of way. She decides to tell everything from Loki's point of view. He is of course a highly unreliable narrator. To hear Loki tell it he was just a free fire spirit of Chaos, minding his own business until Odin named him and thus summoned him, somewhat against his will, into the material planes of existence. Loki becomes Odin's blood brother. Odin swears unending hospitality to Loki. Loki thinks that Odin uses him to do the things that he can't be seen to support. People may love God but no one likes the Angel of Death or wants to lose their firstborn. 

Mary Kay Letourneau is Unrepentant

In some states the age of consent is sixteen. That is likely a leftover from the times when people who weren't married by their early twenties at the latest were thought to have something profoundly wrong with them, morally or otherwise. I think laws notwithstanding, today most adults would look askance at a thirty-four year old adult who decided to get busy with a sixteen-year old.

There is no state where the age of consent is less than sixteen. Most normal people in the United States recognize that no matter what they look like or say, such people are children. Adults shouldn't pursue sexual relations with children. That's abuse. That's wrong. You may remember that thirty four year old Seattle area married teacher Mary Kay Letourneau had sex with raped her sixth-grade student, Vili Fualaau, then twelve years old. Curiously enough one could make the argument that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Letourneau's father, John Schmitz (a Holocaust denier, segregationist, and someone so noxious that he was expelled from the John Birch Society) also had an extramarital affair with a (former) student, though at least he was prudent enough to do his thing with a woman who was an adult. Letourneau had no such scruples.

Despite an initial slap on the wrist, legally speaking, Letourneau would not stay away from Fualaau, becoming pregnant at least twice and ending up with a prison sentence of a little over seven years. I think that was still too light all things considered. Anyway all that was a long time ago. The two married after Letourneau's release from prison. Letourneau and Fualaau are still married. He's 34. She's 56. The couple's children are now adults. The couple recently sat down for an interview with an Australian television show.